Wrath of Dagon

You can play the whole game in over the shoulder or in isometric, or switch whenever you like, it's your choice. Although it'll probably be difficult to micromanage combat in over the shoulder.

I think they use their own save file for that, it's the one they use if you restart the game with an existing character.

I didn't say I didn't believe them, I said I was skeptical, which isn't quite the same thing. The two of their games I had played didn't fit the statements I bolded. Also I recently had my fanboy heart broken by ME, which made similar grandiose statements in their marketing. All I said was I'd like some clarification and examples. Now that they showed a mission, I can understand one of the things they meant was they had a faction and reputation system, which sounds less vague and grand than a "a living world which responds to you".

To gain influence with Kreia, you had to accept her "lessons", which meant you had to agree with her cynicism, even when playing lightside. To gain influence with G0-T0, you had to get him early in the game, and then take him on a lot of missions, even though he was fairly useless in combat and had blackmailed his way into your party. If you didn't get enough influence with him, you'd never understand what that stuff on Nar Shadaa was all about.

What was the last great game Sega published? How's that different from other quests? There was a merchant on Yavin station. In K1 you could kill Juhani, side with either gang on Taris, side with one or neither of the Sith masters on Korriban, kill most of your companions. None of this stuff is world changing, just the usual RPG quests with localized consequences. Actually K1 did have something world changing, you could poison the shark on Manaan and make health packs rare and expensive. But this small stuff is not really C&C, let alone living, breathing world you're influencing.

Did you ever talk to your companions? The influence system was a poor substitute for C&C. All it did was force you to kiss your party members' asses to unlock content necessary to fully understand the story. It actually undermined roleplaying by making you behave contrary to how you'd normally want to, and provided no alternative reward. Plus it was pretty broken, especially in Mandalore's case.

Sega is a great publisher? Only compared to Atari. K2 a lot more roleplaying than K1? You mean like who shows up at the end to help you on Telos? I must've missed everything else.

Their 2 games that I completed, KOTOR2 and NWN2 didn't have that much of either, so I'm yet to be convinced.

If MotB did that, these claims would be more credible, but I haven't gotten to that part yet. From the Gamespot preview, it sounds like they're talking about factions and a reputation system, though perhaps there's more to it.

What seems too good to be true? The bolded portions:

Great, except for Rainbow 6 shots. And that's not Castro, that looks like a Middle Eastern guy.

Here's a quote from David Gaider on DA forums that hopefully clarifies the "low magic" thing (pretty much what I said before):

Looking at the first game, I'm not inclined to give them a lot of benefit of the doubt.

I'm a bit skeptical of some of the features. Sounds a bit too good to be true, and very hard to implement. May be some examples are in order. Edit: Some similar claims were made about ME in their marketing campaign, and turned out to be highly misleading. Obsidian does seem to be quite a bit more forthcoming than Bioware, but still I'm wary.

Well, they didn't.

Rare but powerful just means there isn't a Mages Guild in every town. If you're a mage, not only will you be powerful but also feared and respected.

Exactly. Just look how much a little alien ass did for Mass Effect. Also DA was always planned to be M, because it sells better.

Magic is rare and powerful, but I don't recall anyone saying DA is low magic, in fact magic is likely to play a central part. Certainly one of the classes is a mage. They said their approach to magic is to think about how it would work if it was real.

Good points.

You can restart ME1 with a character at level 60. They'll just scale everything to your level. For ME2 they can even let you level up to level higher than 1 to start with, even if you didn't play ME1.

There are interesting aspects to the game, like magic being rare and powerful, different competing religions in the world, gods which do not explicitly manifest themselves, dwarven politics including dwarven outcasts, elves apparently being cursed by their gods or something of the sort, what ushered in the Dragon Age after the Blessed Age. So I don't think it'll be a Tolkien rip off, even if the art style is reminiscent of Peter Jackson. Has anyone ever made a good LOTR RPG in any case?

Unlike KOTOR, ME was planned as a trilogy all along, with the story continuing through all 3 games. But if the consequences are as non-existent as in the first game, who cares? I'd imagine it'll be similar to selecting your background in the first game, where you get a special quest or 2 depending on some decision you made in the 1st game, and a bit of dialog about it.

Yes, that gets asked regularly, but they won't talk about it until they make an official announcement, which will likely be when they're done optimizing, i.e. close to release.

Combat will be rule-based, not actiony.